If you liked The Shallows and Crawl, this is going to be right up your alley as another lean, mean, mid-budget man vs. nature summer thriller.

It's written by the guy who did Non-Stop and The Commuter, the Liam Neeson flicks, so you probably have some idea of the format here-- the dialogue for the first 10-15 minutes will be incredibly straight-forward, to the point of spoon-feeding you, but that's largely in service of getting you to the action and thrills that much faster.

The cinematography is *really* impressive-- lots of long shots that linger and swirl, keeping you guessing as to when a fucking lion is going to pop into the frame or appear lurking behind a character. Didn't expect this movie to feature so many shots that go easily 30-60 seconds without a visible cut, but they're plentiful-- a couple of them might have gone for minutes. It's showy, but showy for a purpose, to immerse you win the experience.

And the CGI was better than I expected, honestly. You see a $36 mil August thriller with a creature, you expect wack shit-- but, frankly, I thought these CGI animals were better than the ones in Prey. The animation gives the animals weight, and the interaction with the actors made the animals seem surprisingly tangible. You're never fully sold in movies like these that the lions are real, of course, but between the framing and the lighting and the lengthy shots building the suspense and the weight the animals seem to have when interacting with the ground and objects and actors... they're real enough to make the thrills effective.

I love Elba in this mode. Old-school movie star performance. Nothing too showy, just carrying the movie. Would love to see him continue to pick up the mantle of the mid-budget actioner that Liam Neeson has aged out of. Elba could absolutely be that guy. And I love having movies like this late in the summer. Nothing fancy, just a straight-forward thriller with a straight-forward concept executed with style.

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My movie reviews: https://letterboxd.com/RussellHFilm/
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